Paying for the development of OS or any future AoS clone?

The original, free Ace of Spades game powered by the Voxlap engine. Known as “Classic,” 0.75, 0.76, and all 0.x versions. Created by Ben Aksoy.
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QuantumWraith
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It seems like a common reason people give for why development on Openspades (or Iceball, or whatever) is so slow is that there are only so few devs, using their own free time, to work on these projects. But what about the possibility of getting a kickstarter ( or similar) page started to attempt to crowdfund them? I'm sure there have to be a bunch of folks floating around who enjoy(ed) AoS and would be willing to pay to have more consistent development on similar projects and/or advertising. I'm certainly one of them. How about you?
LeCom


I actually find the other idea of asking jagex to develop a game for us better.
Lincent
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QuantumWraith wrote:
It seems like a common reason people give for why development on Openspades (or Iceball, or whatever) is so slow is that there are only so few devs, using their own free time, to work on these projects. But what about the possibility of getting a kickstarter ( or similar) page started to attempt to crowdfund them? I'm sure there have to be a bunch of folks floating around who enjoy(ed) AoS and would be willing to pay to have more consistent development on similar projects and/or advertising. I'm certainly one of them. How about you?
Thats not the problem, the real problem is that no one is advertising their games; The Games are basically set in terms of their development, its just that next to no one is soliciting them.

Basically the reason why development is slow now is because there isn't much left to add.
;Im not saying there isn't anything left to add.
Chameleon
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There is stuff to add, expand or fix. For example, OpenSpades software renderer has been forgotten and not updated, so it's slower than original AoS 0.x one (for those that have fast CPU, but shit GPU). There are only 3 weapons and one type of nades. Player, weapon model size is not being limited (size cheating, gun lasers). Fixed maximum number of players. Fixed size of map. Only 3 loadouts ("INFiltration 2.9" or "Urban Terror" kind is better). Movement accuracy penalty.

And don't say DIY, because I already am.
Lincent
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Chameleon wrote:
There is stuff to add, expand or fix. For example, OpenSpades software renderer has been forgotten and not updated, so it's slower than original AoS 0.x one (for those that have fast CPU, but shit GPU).
I agree.
Chameleon wrote:
There are only 3 weapons and one type of nades. Player, weapon model size is not being limited (size cheating, gun lasers).
That would be changing Openspades to much.
Chameleon wrote:
Fixed maximum number of players. Fixed size of map. Only 3 loadouts
We already have that.?

Chameleon wrote:
("INFiltration 2.9" or "Urban Terror" kind is better).
Infiltration is a gamemode, it isn't part of Openspades.
Chameleon wrote:
Movement accuracy penalty.
I have no idea what your talking about here.

I agree that the Openspades engine should be updated so that more people can play it, but for everything else it is either going to far from the game or it doesn't make sense.
LeCom


If there actually were proper servers and admins, I would just say that OS should be made 100% flexible and the protocol should be extended to make any kinds of scripts or modifications possible.
Chameleon
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LeCom gets it.
The only things I really didn't like about IceBall is that making weapon visual mods are pain in the ... and that it suffered from stuttering, probably caused by fogrange map loading (during the game), other than that IB customiseability is desireable.
I like the idea of playing a Space Marine invasion of a spaceship in zero-G, then on other server playing old trench warfare with bolt-actions and overheating HMGs.
Lincent wrote:
That would be changing Openspades to much.
a) you give it a try b) you let the game die
If balanced properly, more guns would be welcome. For example, choosing over semi-auto or bolt-action rifle. SMG or AR. Mortar or HMG. Ofc no cod bullshit where you carry 3+ weapons with full ammo at once.
Lincent wrote:
Chameleon wrote:
Fixed maximum number of players. Fixed size of map. Only 3 loadouts
We already have that.?
Yes and that needs to change.
Spoiler:
Having 64 players on 1024x1024x64 would feel cramped.
Having only 3 loadouts is bullshit. What if I don't need any nades, I need more ammo? Wouldn't it be cool to have slow, powerful bolt-action rifle?
What if we really put players in charge of their tactics - sniper carrying as much ammo as he can get, CQB assaulters carrying 4 nades or a sidearm, HMG guy carrying only HMG and ammo for it, medics having medkits and a couple mags less?
Lincent wrote:
Infiltration is a gamemode, it isn't part of Openspades.
I am sorry I did not clarify that "Infiltration 2.9" and "UrbanTerror" are both games (old&free). They employ two very different loadout systems: Inf2.9 is weight-limited and UrbanTerror is space-limited.
Lincent wrote:
I have no idea what your talking about here.
Movement = pressing W A S D, jumping, repeatedly crouching results in more weapon spread. Try moving while holding 5 kg in front of you, I doubt you point of aim will be very stable. Plus, this is one way to get rid of crouch spammers/strafers/trick shooters.
Marisa Kirisame
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Chameleon wrote:
suffered from stuttering, probably caused by fogrange map loading (during the game)
Not sure how long ago you tried this.

If you tried it recently the framedrops are most likely due to the portal gun mod generating a mesh.

Otherwise, we fixed the worst of the performance rot issue that used to plague things (it was CPU-bound and caused by I believe 3 different bugs), and we also fixed the issue where it was committing the map icon layer bitmap to video memory every frame, which was 512x512 32bpp for the average map.
bloodfox
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Chammy wrote:
What if we really put players in charge of their tactics - sniper carrying as much ammo as he can get, CQB assaulters carrying 4 nades or a sidearm, HMG guy carrying only HMG and ammo for it, medics having medkits and a couple mags less?
FUCK NO. Yes, we should add more guns and all, but putting players in charge of tactics? Fuck. No. Why? Because the community is already to set to the mindset of "Ohh I'll go solo with my smgay and fucking shoot everyone down. Pffft. I don't need teammates." Have you seriously heard of players playing games for sooo long then all the sudden their forced to choose a different tactic in general? No.
Chameleon
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Explain this further please?

My point of view is:
I find that being able to choose loadout, to "specialize" would be welcome. Keep the system fast&simple, like UrbanTerror has - takes literally like less than 3 seconds to go from grenade assault to sniper.

And as for team play,
Well it's not my problem if community is narrow minded. Team play is possible in AoS and you will see it as soon as you make it possible. A few examples:
If you were able to heal each other (but not yourself), then you'd see people not camping alone. Sometimes setting up medic points near high casualty points. Having medkit makes you heal faster & more (up to some point, like 90%).
If you increase fog range/decrease accuracy of weapons/decrease head hitzone/add helmet shot deflection, there will be less deaths, but more injuries. Means more chance to get injured, less to die. So people will team up once again to stay alive.
If you add stamina, which depends on your health, and walking/running/sprinting/jumping/aiming depend on it, hurt players will look for medics instead of engaging distant enemies.
If you add powerful deployable HMGs/Mortars, but make them very ammo limited and make it possible for others to carry ammo, you might see HMG/Mortar teams.
Add more spawn delay and people will value their lifes more. Add more realism, like sad/scary dying effect and they'll do their best to stay alive, not just run&gun&die.

I know what I am talking about. You should check out Urban Terror, it's about 1.5 gb download. It can get even faster paced than CoDshit, and sometimes can slow down like ArmA for some short time. It is so damn fast you can get killed by most weapons in split second, yet you can find people healing each other just behind a tiny bit of cover. Or maybe one healing, other covering.]

Btw, yes I know that's kind of advertisement for other game, but hey, it's been alive for ~10 years. More alive than AoS is or was. It's free and will always be.
bloodfox
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ok, I see where you're going now. My apologies as for I should of let you explained it more- I can now see the possibilities of your suggestion and I really hope that you'll put it in your forked client.
Chameleon
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Yeah, but that'll be possible only if I fork server software too. Remember that OS must reach comparable performance to AoS o.x, then we can pork servers and add whatever the hell we want. Can't just split community, can't tell users with grandmother rigs to fuck off, I was one of them (still kind of am).
ByteBit
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LeCom wrote:
If there actually were proper servers and admins, I would just say that OS should be made 100% flexible and the protocol should be extended to make any kinds of scripts or modifications possible.
Already started on this http://bytebit.info.tm/battleofspades/f ... ckets.html
LeCom


ByteBit wrote:
LeCom wrote:
If there actually were proper servers and admins, I would just say that OS should be made 100% flexible and the protocol should be extended to make any kinds of scripts or modifications possible.
Already started on this http://bytebit.info.tm/battleofspades/f ... ckets.html
Being able to modify anything vs. not having to send a kbyte of crap just to modify one byte vs. not having a shitton of different packets for small stuff.

I'm thinking of some kind of packet to modify memory. You may think "omg this is dangerous af" now (especially if you're a C user), but checking the packet for valid values needs only a few simple lines and isn't a problem actually. The packet should consist of: amount of things to change, the offsets/data locations, and the new values. Size is variable, data types have to be deduced by converting the object struct into a table.
Another concept I thought of is something I had in VXW: a very close connection between server-side objects and the netcode. Basically, you have the Python objects on the server, then you modify them, and finally the server code does all the packet sending stuff. The server then uses the memory access packet to update any changes done to the object.

Also, no entities or hardcoded tents/intels, everything except for players and maybe nades is an object. The server itself can actually have "hardcoded" stuff, you just inherit the basic object class and feel free to mess with it. For example, in VXW, there was an HMG_t class, which was just Object_t with the HMG equipping stuff thrown in additionally.
Marisa Kirisame
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LeCom wrote:
I'm thinking of some kind of packet to modify memory. You may think "omg this is dangerous af" now (especially if you're a C user), but checking the packet for valid values needs only a few simple lines and isn't a problem actually.
If you're taking that approach, you might as well write a VM. I highly recommend ARM, but MIPS also works. Which one you choose depends on which quirks you're prepared to face: ARM has the barrel shifter unit, weird behaviour pertaining to the program counter, and you have flags to calculate (Thumb support might be optional here), while MIPS has a delay slot on branches and memory accesses.

Main reason for those choices is that there are C compilers for them, but they're also notably easier to emulate than, say, a 6502. (Which is easier to emulate than a Z80, or a 68000, or an x86. Trust me when I say the Z80 is a pain in the arse to emulate. Seriously, those two "unused" bits in the flags register can fuck right off.)

If you want a cross-compiler, binutils + gcc + newlib. binutils is pretty easy to build, gcc takes a fair bit of fiddling (--without-headers --with-languages=c (seriously, don't bother with C++ unless you want to rip the whole thing apart to get a cross-libstdc++ to build)), and once you've got those two in place newlib should build nicely, so it's just a matter of providing the right functions for newlib to use.

Up to you if you want to emulate an FPU or just make it use soft floats, although the former is probably a better idea.

If you really want to you can provide dynarecs... in that case, MIPS might be the better choice as you don't have to worry about setting flags at all, you just have to get your head around the delay slots.

Of course, you don't have to emulate kernel mode or software interrupts accurately, you can just catch them and handle syscalls however the hell you like.
LeCom wrote:
Another concept I thought of is something I had in VXW: a very close connection between server-side objects and the netcode. Basically, you have the Python objects on the server, then you modify them, and finally the server code does all the packet sending stuff. The server then uses the memory access packet to update any changes done to the object.
What Quake 3 does is it provides a struct, compares the values against a previous version, and sends the bytes that are affected. So kinda like what you're suggesting, but more C-like.
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